The present invention relates to a method for installing and servicing an apparatus recovering the kinetic energy of water and an apparatus for recovering the kinetic energy of water.
The apparatus according to the invention is suited very well for instance for an apparatus for recovering wave energy or tidal energy of seawater. The recovered energy is further converted for instance to electric energy and/or fresh water. In the following only the apparatus for recovering wave energy is dealt with a more precise way.
In the wave energy recovery solutions according to the prior art each recovery unit is usually situated separately on its own base on the bottom of the water basin, such as the bottom of sea. The base for each recovery unit has been made ready on the sea bottom before the installation of the recovery unit. The manufacture of that kind of the base at the sea bottom is slow, requires a lot of preparations, contains a lot of expensive diving labor, and needs a lot of various fixtures. In addition in order to install the recovery unit onto the said base heavy vessel and crane fixtures are required. However, that kind of heavy fixtures is usually not easily available for just the time it is needed. For that reason the prior art solutions suffer from extensive installation costs and a slow installation work. In addition one problem is the inconvenience involved with the maintenance or servicing. The maintenance work requires also a lot of preparation work and heavy vessel and crane fixtures in order to lift the recovery unit onto the surface of the water and to perform the service needed. Also after the service works the same heavy fixtures are needed again. This is slow and makes the service works very expensive.